Putnam

ISSN 0080 – 6757
© 2007 The Author(s)

Journal compilation © 2007 Nordic Political Science Association
E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and

Original
XXX
© 2007 The
Blackwell
Oxford, Articles
Scandinavian
SCPS
0080-6757
Nordic
UK Author(s)
Publishing
Political
PoliticalJournal
LtdSciencecompilation
Studies Association© 2007 Nordic Political Science Association
Community in the Twenty-first Century

The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture
Robert D. Putnam*
Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in
immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural,
economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic
diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests
that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust
(even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In
the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by
creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustra-
tions of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institu-
tions, and earlier waves of American immigration.
One of the most important challenges facing modern societies, and at the
same time one of our most significant opportunities, is the increase in ethnic
and social heterogeneity in virtually all advanced countries. The most certain
prediction that we can make about almost any modern society is that it will
be more diverse a generation from now than it is today. This is true from
Sweden to the United States and from New Zealand to Ireland. In this
article, I want to begin to explore the implications of that transition to a
more diverse, multicultural society for ‘social capital’ – the concept for
which I have been honored by the Skytte Prize committee.1
I begin with a word or two about this concept, which has been the subject
of an exponentially expanding and controversial literature over the last
fifteen years. I prefer a ‘lean and mean’ definition: social networks and the
associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.2 The core insight of this
approach is extremely simple: like tools (physical capital) and training
(human capital), social networks have value. Networks have value, first, to
people who are in the networks. For example, economic sociologists have
shown repeatedly that labor markets are thoroughly permeated by networks
* Harvard University and University of Manchester. E-mail: robert_putnam@harvard.edu
Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 137

so that most of us are as likely to get our jobs through whom we know as
through what we know. Indeed, it has been shown that our lifetime income is
powerfully affected by the quality of our networks (Granovetter 1973, 1974;
Burt 1992, 1997; Lin 1999, 2001). Similarly, much evidence is accumulating
about the health benefits of social ties (House et al. 1988; Berkman 1995;
Seeman 1996; Berkman & Glass 2000).
What makes social networks even more interesting, however, is that they
also have implications for bystanders. For example, criminologists have
taught us the power of neighbourhood networks to deter crime (Sampson
et al. 1997; Sampson 2001). My wife and I have the good fortune to live in a
neighbourhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, that has a good deal of social
capital: barbecues and cocktail parties and so on. I am able to be in Uppsala,
Sweden, confident that my home is being protected by all that social capital,
even though – and this is the moment for confession – I actually never go to
the barbecues and cocktail parties. In other words, I benefit from those social
networks even though I am not actually in them myself. In the language of
economics, social networks often have powerful externalities.
Social capital comes in many forms, not all fungible. Not all networks have
exactly the same effects: friends may improve health, whereas civic groups
strengthen democracy. Moreover, although networks can powerfully affect
our ability to get things done, nothing guarantees that what gets done through
networks will be socially beneficial. Al Qaeda, for instance, is an excellent
example of social capital, enabling its participants to accomplish goals they could
not accomplish without that network. Nevertheless, much evidence suggests
that where levels of social capital are higher, children grow up healthier, safer
and better educated, people live longer, happier lives, and democracy and
the economy work better (Putnam 2000, Section IV). So it seems worthwhile
to explore the implications of immigration and ethnic diversity for social capital.
In this article, I wish to make three broad points:
• Ethnic diversity will increase substantially in virtually all modern societies

over the next several decades, in part because of immigration. Increased
immigration and diversity are not only inevitable, but over the long run
they are also desirable. Ethnic diversity is, on balance, an important social
asset, as the history of my own country demonstrates.
• In the short to medium run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity
challenge social solidarity and inhibit social capital. In support of this
provocative claim I wish to adduce some new evidence, drawn primarily
from the United States. In order to elaborate on the details of this new
evidence, this portion of my article is longer and more technical than my
discussion of the other two core claims, but all three are equally important.
• In the medium to long run, on the other hand, successful immigrant
societies create new forms of social solidarity and dampen the negative
138 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

effects of diversity by constructing new, more encompassing identities.

Thus, the central challenge for modern, diversifying societies is to create
a new, broader sense of ‘we’.
The Prospects and Benefits of Immigration and

Ethnic Diversity
Figure 1 provides illustrative evidence that immigration has grown remarkably
across the advanced nations of the world over the last half century. This
chart shows the trends in six different countries, selected more or less at
random, with quite different historical trajectories: the United States, Ireland,
Sweden, Germany, Britain and France. Although these countries began at
somewhat different starting points in the 1960s (France relatively higher,
Ireland relatively lower), the general pattern is a clear convergence toward
a much higher number of immigrants as a fraction of the total population.
Of course, not all immigrants are ethnically different from the native
population: Danish immigrants do not significantly alter the ethnic mix in
Sweden, nor do Canadian immigrants in the United States. Conversely,
much of the ethnic diversity in the United States, especially black-white
Figure 1. Growth of Immigration in Selected OECD Countries, 1960–2005.
Source: Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations
Secretariat, ‘Trends in Total Migrant Stock: The 2005 Revision’, http://esa.un.org/migration, 27 September
2006.

diversity, is entirely unrelated to immigration since the ancestors of most

African-Americans have been in the United States longer than the ancestors
of most white Americans. So diversity and immigration are not identical, and
in our subsequent, more detailed analyses we will need to make that distinction
more explicit and rigorous. Nonetheless, as a general rule, the mounting
wave of immigration depicted in Figure 1 has increased ethnic diversity in
the receiving countries. Moreover, because immigrant groups typically have
higher fertility rates than native-born groups, ethnic diversity in virtually all
of these countries would still increase in the years ahead, even if all new
immigration were somehow halted (Smith & Edmonston 1997).
So our societies will inevitably be more ethnically diverse tomorrow than
they are today. And that diversity will be a valuable national asset.3 It is not
merely that national cuisine is enhanced by immigration, or even that culture
of all sorts is enhanced by diversity, though culture and cuisine in my own
country provide powerful evidence of those benefits.
• Creativity in general seems to be enhanced by immigration and diversity

(Simonton 1999). Throughout history, for example, immigrants have
accounted for three to four times as many of America’s Nobel Laureates,
National Academy of Science members, Academy Award film directors
and winners of Kennedy Center awards in the performing arts as native-
born Americans (Lerner & Roy 1984; Simonton 1999, Chapter 6; Smith
& Edmonston 1997, 384–5). If we were to include second-generation
immigrants (i.e. the children of immigrants), the contribution of
immigrants would be even greater. Many (though not all) of the scores of
studies of collective creativity in work groups (in business, education and
so on) find that diversity fosters creativity (Webber & Donahue 2001;
O’Reilly et al. 1997; Williams & O’Reilly 1998). Scott Page (2007) has
powerfully summarized evidence that diversity (especially intellectual
diversity) produces much better, faster problem-solving.
• Immigration is generally associated with more rapid economic growth.
The economics profession has debated the short-run economic conse-
quences of immigration for native workers. While there are important dis-
tributional effects to be considered, especially the impact of immigration
on low-wage native workers in the US, the weight of the evidence suggests
that the net effect of immigration is to increase national income. One
recent study, for example, suggests that the income of native-born Americans
rises more rapidly, ceteris paribus, if they are living in places with more
immigrants than if they are living in places with fewer immigrants.4
• In advanced countries with aging populations, immigration is important
to help offset the impending fiscal effects of the retirement of the baby-
boom generation (Smith & Edmonston 1997, Chapters 6 and 7). In my
country, for example, young immigrant workers (documented and

undocumented) contribute financially to our Social Security system, but

will not draw benefits for several decades, if at all, thus mitigating the
otherwise unsustainable imbalance in the medium term between outflow
and inflow into our national coffers.5 This effect is even more important
in the more rapidly aging nations of Europe and East Asia.
• New research from the World Bank has highlighted yet another benefit
from immigration, one of special relevance to the Nordic countries that
have long played a disproportionate role on issues of global development.
This new research suggests that immigration from the global South to the
richer North greatly enhances development in the South, partly because
of remittances from immigrants to their families back home and partly
because of the transfer of technology and new ideas through immigrant
networks. So powerful is this effect that despite ‘brain drain’ costs,
increasing annual northward immigration by only three percentage points
might produce net benefits greater than meeting all our national targets for
development assistance plus cancelling all Third World debt plus abolishing
all barriers to Third World trade (World Bank 2005; Pritchett 2006).
In short, immigration and multicultural diversity have powerful advantages

for both sending and receiving countries. Yet what about the effects on social
capital?
Immigration and Diversity Foster Social Isolation

In the theoretical toolkit of social science we find two diametrically opposed
perspectives on the effects of diversity on social connections. The first, usually
labelled the ‘contact hypothesis’, argues that diversity fosters interethnic
tolerance and social solidarity. As we have more contact with people who are
unlike us, we overcome our initial hesitation and ignorance and come to trust
them more. Some of the most striking evidence in support of the contact
hypothesis came originally from a famous study of the American soldier
during the Second World War. White soldiers were asked how they would
feel about having black soldiers serving in the same platoon with them. As
Table 1 shows, among white soldiers who in fact had no contact with black
soldiers, most opposed the idea. On the other hand, white soldiers who had
been assigned to units with black soldiers were much more relaxed about the
idea of racial integration (Stouffer 1949).
Evidence of this sort suggested to social psychologists, beginning with
Gordon Allport in the 1950s, the optimistic hypothesis that if we have more
contact with people of other ethnic and racial backgrounds (or at least more
contact in the right circumstances), we will all begin to trust one another
more.6 More formally, according to this theory, diversity reduces ethnocentric

Table 1. Attitudes of White Soldiers in United States Army in the Second World War toward
Racial Integration
Percentage opposed to Percentage opposed to

mixing black and white a general policy of mixing
Extent of contact with black troops platoons in their company black and white platoons
No contact 62 82
Same division, but not same 24 50
regiment as black troops
Same regiment, but not same 20 44
company as black troops
Same company as black troops 7 46
attitudes and fosters out-group trust and solidarity. If black and white chil-
dren attend the same schools, for example, race relations will improve. This
logic (and the sort of evidence presented in Table 1) was an important
part of the legal case that led the United States Supreme Court to require
racial desegregation in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case in
1954. For progressives, the contact theory is alluring, but I think it is fair to
say that most (though not all) empirical studies have tended instead to sup-
port the so-called ‘conflict theory’, which suggests that, for various reasons –
but above all, contention over limited resources – diversity fosters out-group
distrust and in-group solidarity. On this theory, the more we are brought
into physical proximity with people of another race or ethnic background,
the more we stick to ‘our own’ and the less we trust the ‘other’ (Blumer 1958;
Blalock 1967; Giles & Evans 1986; Quillian 1995, 1996; Brewer & Brown
1998; Taylor 1998; Bobo 1999; Bobo & Tuan 2006).
The evidence that diversity and solidarity are negatively correlated
(controlling for many potentially confounding variables) comes from many
different settings:
• Across workgroups in the United States, as well as in Europe, internal

heterogeneity (in terms of age, professional background, ethnicity, tenure
and other factors) is generally associated with lower group cohesion,
lower satisfaction and higher turnover (Jackson et al. 1991; Cohen & Bailey
1997; Keller 2001; Webber & Donahue 2001).
• Across countries, greater ethnic heterogeneity seems to be associated
with lower social trust (Newton & Delhey 2005; Anderson & Paskeviciute
2006; but see also Hooghe et al. 2006).
• Across local areas in the United States, Australia, Sweden, Canada and
Britain, greater ethnic diversity is associated with lower social trust and,
at least in some cases, lower investment in public goods (Poterba 1997;
Alesina et al. 1999; Alesina & La Ferrara 2000, 2002; Costa & Kahn 2003b;

Vigdor 2004; Glaeser & Alesina 2004; Leigh 2006; Jordahl & Gustavsson
2006; Soroka et al. 2007; Pennant 2005; but see also Letki forthcoming).
• Among Peruvian micro-credit cooperatives, ethnic heterogeneity is asso-
ciated with higher default rates; across Kenyan school districts ethno-
linguistic diversity is associated with less voluntary fundraising; and in
Himalayan Pakistan, clan, religious, and political diversity are linked with
failure of collective infrastructure maintenance (Karlan 2002; Miguel &
Gugerty 2005; Khwaja 2006).
• Across American census tracts, greater ethnic heterogeneity is associated
with lower rates of car-pooling, a social practice that embodies trust and
reciprocity (Charles & Kline 2002).
• Within experimental game settings such as prisoners-dilemma or ultimatum
games, players who are more different from one another (regardless of
whether or not they actually know one another) are more likely to defect (or
‘cheat’). Such results have been reported in many countries, from Uganda
to the United States (Glaeser et al. 2000; Fershtman & Gneezy 2001;
Eckel & Grossman 2001; Willinger et al. 2003; Bouckaert & Dhaene 2004;
Johansson-Stenman et al. 2005; Gil-White 2004; Habyarimana et al. 2006).
• Within the Union (northern) Army in the American Civil War, the
casualty rate was very high and the risks of punishment for desertion were
very low, so the only powerful force inhibiting the rational response of
desertion was loyalty to one’s fellow soldiers, virtually all of whom were
other white males. Across companies in the Union Army, the greater the
internal heterogeneity (in terms of age, hometown, occupation, etc.), the
higher the desertion rate (Costa & Kahn 2003a).
Advocates of the conflict and contact theories clearly disagree about the
balance of the empirical evidence, but in their shared focus on ethnocentric
attitudes, they share one fundamental assumption – namely that in-group
trust and out-group trust are negatively correlated. I believe this assumption
is unwarranted and may have obscured some of the most interesting and
unexpected consequences of diversity for social capital. In order to explain
why, I need to remind you of an important distinction now commonly made
in the field of social capital – that is, the distinction between ‘bonding’ social
capital (ties to people who are like you in some important way) and ‘bridging’
social capital (ties to people who are unlike you in some important way). So,
my bonding social capital consists of my ties to other white, male, elderly
professors, and my bridging social capital reflects my ties to people of a
different generation or a different race or a different gender.
Too often, without really thinking about it, we assume that bridging social
capital and bonding social capital are inversely correlated in a kind of zero-
sum relationship: if I have lots of bonding ties, I must have few bridging ties,
and vice versa. As an empirical matter, I believe that assumption is often

false. In other words, high bonding might well be compatible with high
bridging, and low bonding with low bridging.7 In the United States, for example,
whites who have more non-white friends also have more white friends.8 This
article is not the place for an extended discussion of that empirical issue, but
the theoretical point helps to clarify the relationship between diversity and
social capital.
Contact theory suggests that diversity erodes the in-group/out-group
distinction and enhances out-group solidarity or bridging social capital, thus
lowering ethnocentrism. Conflict theory suggests that diversity enhances
the in-group/out-group distinction and strengthens in-group solidarity or
bonding social capital, thus increasing ethnocentrism. However, virtually
none of the hundreds of empirical studies of this broad topic has ever actually
measured in-group attitudes. Instead, researchers have typically measured
out-group attitudes (positive or negative) and have simply assumed that
in-group attitudes must vary inversely. Thus, they have presumed (without
evidence) that their measures of out-group attitudes were straightforward
measures of ethnocentrism.9 However, once we recognize that in-group and out-
group attitudes need not be reciprocally related, but can vary independently,
then we need to allow, logically at least, for the possibility that diversity
might actually reduce both in-group and out-group solidarity – that is, both
bonding and bridging social capital. We might label this possibility ‘constrict
theory’ (a term suggested by my colleague, Abby Williamson).
I now present some initial evidence from the United States on the issue of
how diversity (and by implication, immigration) affects social capital. The
evidence comes from a large nationwide survey, the Social Capital Community
Benchmark Survey, carried out in 2000, with a total sample size of roughly
30,000. Embedded within the nationwide sample is a representative national
sample of 3,000, as well as smaller samples representative of 41 very different
communities across the United States, ranging from large metropolitan areas
like Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Boston to small towns and rural
areas like Yakima, Washington, rural South Dakota and the Kanawha Valley
in the mountains of West Virginia. While these 41 sites vary with respect to
geographic scope from two inner city neighbourhoods to several largely rural
states, for the most part they represent metropolitan areas.10 These sites are
shown in Figure 2 and Table 2. These community sites differ in many ways
(size, economic profile, region, educational levels, etc.), but for our purposes
it is important that they differ greatly in their ethnic diversity. For example,
Los Angeles and San Francisco (roughly 30–40 percent white) are among the
most ethnically diverse human habitations in history, whereas in our rural
South Dakota county (95 percent white) celebrating ‘diversity’ means inviting
a few Norwegians to the annual Swedish picnic.
Another important methodological feature of this survey is that it was
conducted simultaneously with the national census of 2000, and virtually

Figure 2. Social Capital Benchmark Survey Locations.
every interview in our survey was ‘geo-coded’ (i.e. for the vast majority of
our respondents, we know exactly where they live, and thus we know the
demographic characteristics of the census tract within which they live).11
Thus, we know not only the race, education, income, marital status and so on
of our respondents, but also the race, education, income, marital status and
so on of their neighbours. The variability of the thousands of census tracts
within which our respondents live is even greater than the variability across
the 41 sample communities. Some respondents live in neighbourhoods that
are almost completely homogeneous, while others live in neighbourhoods that
are extremely diverse in every respect. For our detailed and most sophisticated
analyses presented below, we use the individual as the unit of analysis,
linking his or her attitudes and behavior to the characteristics of his or her
neighbourhood. For expository purposes, however, I begin by using the
community as the unit of analysis, showing how the diversity of a community
is linked to the average level of social capital in that community.
One last methodological preliminary: For present purposes, we adopt the
basic fourfold categorization of race and ethnicity that was used in the
concurrent census: Hispanic, non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black and
Asian. This classification scheme, like all such schemes, is ‘socially con-
structed’ – that is, it is not God-given, or biological, or timeless and unchang-
ing, or uniquely defensible. Indeed, the social construction of ethnicity will
be an important part of my concluding remarks. However, this typology has

Table 2. Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey Sites
Site State N
National sample 3,003

Atlanta Metro GA 510
Baton Rouge LA 500
Birmingham Metro AL 500
Bismarck ND 506
Boston MA 604
Boulder CO 500
Central Oregon (mid-sized town) OR 500
Charlotte region/14 county NC 1,500
Chicago Metro IL 750
Cincinnati Metro OH 1,001
Cleveland/Cuyahoga County OH 1,100
Delaware (statewide) DE 1,383
Denver (city/County) CO 501
Detroit Metro/7 county MI 501
East Bay (urban neighbourhood) CA 500
East Tennessee (rural region) TN 500
Fremont/Newaygo County MI 753
Grand Rapids (city) MI 502
Greensboro/Guilford County NC 752
Houston/Harris County TX 500
Indiana (selected counties) IN 1,001
Kalamazoo County MI 500
Kanawha Valley WV 500
Lewiston-Auburn ME 523
Los Angeles County CA 515
Minneapolis MN 501
Montana (statewide) MT 502
New Hampshire (statewide) NH 711
North Minneapolis (urban neighbourhood) MN 452
Peninsula-Silicon Valley CA 1,505
Phoenix/Maricopa County AZ 501
Rochester Metro NY 988
Rural SE South Dakota county SD 368
San Diego County CA 504
San Francisco (city) CA 500
Seattle WA 502
St Paul Metro MN 503
Syracuse/Onondaga County NY 541
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County NC 750
Yakima WA 500
York PA 500
Total sample size 29,739
two advantages for present purposes. First, it is widely used in public and private
discourse in contemporary America, and second, it allows us to treat respondents
(from our survey) and their neighbours (from the census) in parallel ways.
I begin with probably the least surprising, but in some respects most
misleading, finding from our survey. Figure 3 arrays our 41 communities

Figure 3. Racial Homogeneity and Inter-racial Trust.
according to their ethnic diversity and the average level of inter-racial trust
expressed by our respondents in those communities. We asked every
respondent how much he or she trusted whites, blacks, Asian-Americans
and Hispanics (or Latinos), and we know the respondent’s own ethnicity, so
this measure is simply the average trust expressed toward the other three
ethnic categories.12 Obviously, Figure 3 shows a strong positive relationship
between inter-racial trust and ethnic homogeneity.13 Inter-racial trust is
relatively high in homogeneous South Dakota and relatively low in heteroge-
neous San Francisco or Los Angeles. The more ethnically diverse the people
we live around, the less we trust them. This pattern may be distressing
normatively, but it seems to be consistent with conflict theory. Had we
stopped our inquiry at this point (as previous studies of conflict and contact
theory have done), we would have rejected contact theory, at least in its
simplest form,14 and accepted conflict theory. However, as we shall see
momentarily, the story is actually more complicated.
Figure 4 is directly comparable to Figure 3, except that here our measure
of social capital is trust in ‘people who live in your neighbourhood’. Because
of de facto residential segregation, most Americans’ neighbours are of the
same race as their own. And yet Figure 4 shows virtually the same pattern.

Figure 4. Racial Homogeneity and Trust of Neighbours.
The differences across our 41 sites are very substantial in absolute terms. In
highly diverse Los Angeles or San Francisco, for example, roughly 30 percent
of the inhabitants say that they trust their neighbours ‘a lot’, whereas in the
ethnically homogeneous communities of North and South Dakota, 70–80
percent of the inhabitants say the same. In more diverse communities,
people trust their neighbours less.
Figure 5 repeats the story, but with one important difference. Now we ask
about trust in people of the respondent’s own race: how much do whites trust
other whites, blacks other blacks, Hispanics other Hispanics, and Asians
other Asians? This figure charts an entirely unexpected correlation for it
shows that in-group trust, too, is lower in more diverse settings. Whereas
Figures 3 and 4 are inconsistent with contact theory, Figure 5 is inconsistent
with conflict theory. In other words, in more diverse settings, Americans
distrust not merely people who do not look like them, but even people who do.
Finally, Figure 6 completes the story by arraying community diversity and
‘ethnocentric trust’ – that is, trust in one’s own race minus trust in other
races.15 This figure clearly shows that ethnocentric trust is completely uncor-
related with ethnic diversity. Thus, it suggests that neither conflict theory
nor contact theory corresponds to social reality in contemporary America.

Figure 5. Racial Homogeneity and Intra-racial Trust.
Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or

social isolation. In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse
settings appear to ‘hunker down’ – that is, to pull in like a turtle. Figures 3
to 6, taken together, suggest support for what I earlier tentatively labelled
‘constrict theory’.
So far I have limited my presentation to evidence regarding social trust,
and it is true that the most impressive and substantial patterns we have so far
discovered involve trust of various sorts, including even trust of shop clerks.
However, a wide array of other measures of social capital and civic engage-
ment are also negatively correlated with ethnic diversity.16 In areas of greater
diversity, our respondents demonstrate:
• Lower confidence in local government, local leaders and the local news
media.17
• Lower political efficacy – that is, confidence in their own influence.18
• Lower frequency of registering to vote, but more interest and knowledge
about politics and more participation in protest marches and social reform
groups.19

Figure 6. Racial Homogeneity and Ethnocentric Trust.
• Less expectation that others will cooperate to solve dilemmas of collective

action (e.g., voluntary conservation to ease a water or energy shortage).20
• Less likelihood of working on a community project.21
• Lower likelihood of giving to charity or volunteering.22
• Fewer close friends and confidants.23
• Less happiness and lower perceived quality of life.24
• More time spent watching television and more agreement that ‘television
is my most important form of entertainment’.25
To be sure, some dimensions of social capital and civic engagement seem

relatively unaffected by ethnic diversity in American communities. For
example, organizational activity of various sorts, including religious activity,
is essentially uncorrelated with diversity, once we control for confounding
variables, and as I have already noted, several measures of political engage-
ment are positively correlated with diversity.26 Nevertheless, a reasonably
coherent, consistent image emerges from this analysis.27
Diversity does not produce ‘bad race relations’ or ethnically-defined group
hostility, our findings suggest. Rather, inhabitants of diverse communities
tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless

of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the
worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to
charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less,
to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually
make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television. Note
that this pattern encompasses attitudes and behavior, bridging and bonding
social capital, public and private connections. Diversity, at least in the short
run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us.
This conclusion is provocative, but the graphic evidence presented thus
far (bivariate, aggregate analysis) is open to numerous objections. The first
and most important is that so far I have used community as the unit of analysis,
but that approach obscures a crucial issue – namely, is it who is living in a
community that matters (a compositional effect), or who they are living
around (a contextual effect)? This question can be resolved only by moving
to the individual level of analysis, in which we seek to predict an individual’s
social connectedness from both his or her personal characteristics (race,
age, geographic mobility, etc.) and his or her neighbours’ characteristics
(age, race, mobility, etc.).
Second, the diverse communities in our study are clearly distinctive in
many other ways apart from their ethnic composition. Diverse communities
tend to be larger, more mobile, less egalitarian, more crime-ridden and so on.
Moreover, individuals who live in ethnically diverse places are different in
many ways from people who live in homogeneous areas. They tend to be
poorer, less educated, less likely to own their home, less likely to speak
English and so on. In order to exclude the possibility that the seeming ‘effect’
of diversity is spurious, we must control, statistically speaking, for many
other factors. Our ability to control simultaneously and reliably for many
factors, both individual and aggregate, is enhanced by our much larger
sample of respondents than is typical in social surveys. Yakima, Washington,
for example, is highly diverse, but relatively small, so our sample there helps
distinguish the effects of size and diversity.
These first two methodological objections can be dealt with most
efficiently in the context of multivariate analysis. In our ‘standard model’ we
have included simultaneously controls at both the individual and the census
tract level for:
Age Affluence/poverty Citizenship

Ethnicity Language Commuting time
Education Residential mobility Homeownership
In addition, we control for region of the country; the respondent’s gender,

financial satisfaction and work hours; the population density and the Gini

Table 3. Predicting Trust in Neighbours from Individual and Contextual Variables
B S. E. Beta t Sig.
(Constant) 0.79 0.11 7.0 0.0000

R’s age 0.01 0.00 0.15 21.4 0.0000
R owns home (v. rent) 0.25 0.01 0.13 19.7 0.0000
R’s education (years) 0.04 0.00 0.13 19.1 0.0000
R’s ethnicity: black − 0.31 0.02 − 0.12 −18.6 0.0000
Census tract poverty rate − 0.66 0.09 − 0.08 −7.1 0.0000
R’s satisfaction with current finances 0.10 0.01 0.08 12.4 0.0000
R’s ethnicity: Latino − 0.24 0.02 − 0.07 −9.8 0.0000
R’s household income ($100,000) 0.14 0.02 0.05 7.5 0.0000
County: Non-violent Crimes per Capita − 2.57 0.41 − 0.05 −6.2 0.0000
Census tract Herfindahl Index of Ethnic 0.18 0.04 0.04 5.1 0.0000
Homogeneity
Census Tract Population Density −0.39 0.08 − 0.04 −4.8 0.0000
(100,000 per sq. mi)
Census Tract Percent Living Same Town as −0.24 0.04 − 0.04 −5.4 0.0000
Five Years Earlier
R’s decades in this community .020 .004 0.04 5.3 0.0000
Census Tract Percent Renters − 0.14 0.04 − 0.04 −3.5 0.0006
Census Tract Percent Bachelor’s Degree 0.29 0.07 0.03 4.3 0.0000
R is Spanish-speaker − 0.13 0.03 − 0.03 −4.1 0.0001
R is female 0.05 0.01 0.03 4.7 0.0000
Census Tract Gini Coefficient for Household 0.39 0.15 0.02 2.7 0.0069
Income
Census Tract Average Commute Time (hours) −0.21 − 0.06 −0.02 −3.4 0.0006
R’s ethnicity: Asian − 0.09 0.03 −0.02 −3.3 0.0011
Census Tract Percent United States Citizens 0.21 0.09 0.02 2.2 0.0264
County: Violent Crimes per Capita 6.59 3.35 0.02 2.0 0.0489
Census Tract Percent Over 65 0.21 0.10 0.01 2.1 0.0364
R is a citizen 0.06 0.03 0.01 2.1 0.0356
R’s average monthly work hours .002 .001 0.01 1.8 0.0732
R is resident of South − 0.02 0.02 − 0.01 −1.2 0.2182
R is resident of Midwest − 0.02 0.02 − 0.01 −1.0 0.3296
R is resident of West 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.8 0.4238
R’s commuting time (hours) − 0.00 0.01 0.00 −0.2 0.8069
Notes: Question was ‘How much can you trust people in your neighbourhood?’ N = 23,260.
Adj. R2 = 0.26.
index of income inequality in his or her census tract; and two measures of the
crime rate in the respondent’s county.28 Obviously, it is impossible here to
present the full array of statistical evidence for each of the dozens of dependent
variables we have examined, but the multivariate analysis we carried out is
illustrated in Table 3.
Here we seek to predict trust in neighbours (as measured on the full 4-point
scale) from our standard array of individual and aggregate-level variables.
Not surprisingly, the strongest predictors (controlling for everything else) are
individual-level variables: age (younger people are less trusting), ethnicity
(blacks and Hispanics are less trusting) and socioeconomic class (the educated,
the well-off, and homeowners are more trusting). All of these individual-level

patterns are well-established from past research. Next in importance are

several contextual variables: poverty (less trust among inhabitants of poorer
neighbourhoods), crime (less trust in high-crime areas) and ethnic diversity
(less trust among inhabitants of ethnically heterogeneous neighbourhoods).
It is sadly true in the United States that poverty, crime and diversity are
themselves intercorrelated, but Table 3 shows that even comparing two
equally poor (or equally rich), equally crime-ridden (or equally safe) neigh-
bourhoods, greater ethnic diversity is associated with less trust in neighbours.
We should take the precise numeric estimates here with more than a grain
of salt, but in round numbers Table 3 implies that in terms of the effect on
neighbourly trust, the difference between living in an area as homogeneous
as Bismarck, North Dakota, and one as diverse as Los Angeles is roughly as
great as the difference between an area with a poverty rate of 7 percent and
one with a poverty rate of 23 percent, or between an area with 36 percent
college graduates and one with none. Even holding constant affluence and
poverty, diversity per se has a major effect. Every one of the correlates of ethnic
homogeneity listed above (civic collaboration, altruism, personal friendship,
confidence in local institutions, happiness, television-watching and so on)
passes this same stringent multivariate, multilevel test.
Methodologically speaking, the analysis of contextual effects is one of the
thorniest thickets in contemporary social science. I do not have time or space
here to elaborate on all the serious threats to the validity of these claims that
my colleagues and I have considered, or to adduce all the evidence that has
led us (at least so far) to reject those threats. Nevertheless, it may be useful
simply to list several prominent issues and briefly indicate our verdict.
Self-selection
People mostly choose where to live, and that simple fact opens up a hornets’
nest of methodological problems with correlational analysis since people
with a certain characteristic may choose to live in distinctive areas. For example,
the fact that people with children live nearer to schools does not mean that
proximity to a school caused them to become parents. In our case, however,
selection bias is prima facie implausible as an explanation for our results.
For selection bias to produce a negative correlation between diversity and
sociability, paranoid, television-watching introverts would have to choose
disproportionately to live in mixed neighbourhoods. Phrased differently, a
self-selection interpretation of our results would require, for example, that
when non-whites move into a previously all-white neighbourhood, the first
whites to flee (or the most reluctant to move in) would be the most trusting, and
the last to flee would be the least trusting; or alternatively, that ethnic minorities
and immigrants would selectively choose to move into neighbourhoods in
which the majority residents are most irascible and misanthropic. Common

sense suggests that the opposite is more likely; if anything, selection bias
probably artificially mutes the underlying causal pattern. In short, taking
self-selection into account, our findings may underestimate the real effect of
diversity on social withdrawal.29
Different Strokes for Different Folks?

We considered the possibility that the effects of diversity on social capital
might vary from group to group. Perhaps people in poor neighbourhoods are
more sensitive to diversity than people in upscale neighbourhoods (or the
reverse). Perhaps women are more likely to hunker in the presence of diversity
than men (or the reverse). Perhaps conservatives are more allergic to diver-
sity than liberals (or the reverse). Perhaps the basic relationship is different
for different racial and ethnic groups. Perhaps younger people are less upset
by diversity than older generations. Our base model directly controls for
most of these variables, but the more subtle question here involves inter-
action effects: Does the relationship between diversity and sociability vary
between men and women, upscale and downscale neighbourhoods, liberals and
conservatives, whites and non-whites, young people and older generations?
The short answer is basically ‘no’. The same pattern appears within each
of these demographic groups. To be sure, the strength of the core patterns
varies somewhat from group to group, partly perhaps as a function of sample
size and reduced variance. Thus, for example, the impact of diversity on trust
and sociability seems to be somewhat greater in lower-status neighbourhoods,
but for measures of altruism the negative impact of diversity seems some-
what greater in upper-status areas. Diversity seems to affect men and women
equally, though with minor variation across different indicators of sociability.
The impact of diversity on sociability seems somewhat greater among con-
servatives, but it is significant among liberals, too. The impact of diversity is
definitely greater among whites, but is visible as well among non-whites.
Broadly speaking, contemporary ethnic diversity in American communities
reflects (in roughly equal measure) two quite different historical processes:
the African slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the
growing immigration of Latinos and Asians into the United States in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although all four racial-ethnic categories
are represented in all parts of the country, African-Americans are dispropor-
tionately represented in the Southeast and the urban areas of the North,
whereas Latinos and Asian-Americans are concentrated in the Southwest
and West. Thus, in gross terms, variance in our basic measure of ethnic diversity
can be partitioned into two distinct factors: the percentage of blacks in a
given area and the percentage of immigrants in a given area. It is important
to ask whether these two different types of diversity, with their very different
historical matrices, have different effects on social capital.

Thus, we replicated our multivariate, multilevel analyses, but included

both ‘percent black’ and ‘percent immigrant’ in place of our core measure of
ethnic diversity. For the primary indicators of social capital discussed earlier
(i.e. social trust, community attachment and sociability) each of these two
separate measures of diversity has a significant and independent negative
effect, though percent immigrant seems to have a somewhat more consistent
and powerful effect. In the interests of parsimony, therefore, I have pre-
sented our findings in this article simply in terms of ethnic diversity, rather
than distinguishing among different types of diversity. In subsequent work it
will be desirable to seek to decompose the underlying patterns much further:
what is the effect (for example) of Latino neighbours on blacks’ trust of
Asians? And what is the effect of (say) Mexican neighbours on Cubans’
trust of whites? On the other hand, these further decompositions will be com-
plicated by increasingly severe problems of sample size and multicollinearity.
At this stage in our work, we have discovered no patterns at this level of
disaggregation that would call into question our core finding that ethnic
diversity itself seems to encourage hunkering.
We initially suspected that the effects of diversity might be greater for
older generations raised in a less multicultural era, whereas younger cohorts
would be less discombobulated by diversity. Among twenty-something
respondents in 2000, diversity appears to lower trust somewhat less than it
does among older respondents. However, every successively older cohort
from age 30 to age 90 showed essentially equal effects, so Americans raised
in the 1970s seem fully as unnerved by diversity as those raised in the 1920s.
Moreover, people in their 20s are exceptionally mobile (as they go to college
and take jobs), so their current residence is probably a noisier proxy for their
actual social context. Consequently, even their slightly lower contextual sen-
sitivity might well be merely a passing life cycle effect, not a harbinger of
enduring change. We have unearthed no convincing evidence of generational
differences in reactions to diversity.
Defining Context
In claiming that ethnically diverse neighbourhoods produce hunkering, we use
the census tract as a proxy for ‘neighbourhood’. However, the real neighbour-
hoods in which people experience their daily lives likely vary from census
tracts. Obviously, no nationwide survey could gather contextual data on
personally defined ‘neighbourhoods’ for all respondents, so it is difficult to
address this issue empirically. However, insofar as the error introduced by
this mismatch between objectively and subjectively defined contexts is more
or less random, the net effect is that our results underestimate the real effects
of diversity. Moreover, we have replicated all our key findings using county
as the contextual variable, and the results are virtually identical, though

slightly less sharp, like a photograph that is slightly out of focus.30 That is
precisely what we would expect if the error introduced by mismatch were
random because the mismatch is undoubtedly greater when context is
defined at the more gross level of county than at the finer-grained level of
census tract.31 Moreover, the fact that we find the same contextual effect
using two such different measures of context suggests that the pattern is
impressively robust. The presumption is that if we could magically define the
boundaries of each respondent’s neighbourhood personally and attach
relevant neighbourhood characteristics, the negative effects of diversity might
look even more pronounced.
To confirm the robustness of the relationship between social capital and
ethnic diversity, we exploited an entirely different dataset: a measurement of
social capital for every county in America compiled by Anil Rupasingha,
Stephen J. Goetz and David Freshwater (RGF) at Pennsylvania State
University (Rupasingha et al. 2006). The RGF measure, based on the density
of civic and non-profit organizations, voting turnout and cooperation with
the census, includes no measures of individual attitudes and behaviour, but
it is strongly correlated with an independent survey-based measure of social
trust.32 The advantage of the RGF dataset is that it covers all 3,111 counties
in the continental United States. Controlling for education levels, poverty,
urbanization, commuting time, total population (logged), residential mobility
and region, the RGF social capital measure is strongly negatively correlated
with both immigration and ethnic diversity.33 This entirely independent con-
firmation strengthens our confidence that our core finding is not dependent
upon a restrictive definition of ‘context’.
Non-linearity and Inequality?

We suspected that the effects of ethnic diversity might be non-linear,
perhaps reflecting ‘tipping point’ effects, so that an increase of non-white
immigrants (for example) from 0 to 5 percent might not have the same impact
as an increase from 10 to 15 percent or from 47.5 to 52.5 percent. In fact, we found
no empirical evidence for such non-linear effects of diversity in our analyses.
In exploring the effects of diversity, we have obviously concentrated on ethnic
diversity. However, an equally important and directly analogous set of questions
might be – indeed, should be – posed about the effects of economic diversity.
What is the relationship between neighbourhood economic inequality and
social capital? This query is especially important because (as I have explained
elsewhere) the correlation between economic equality and social capital is
virtually ubiquitous, both across space and across time, both in the United
States and around the world (Putnam 2000, 358–60; Costa & Kahn 2003b).
Our standard statistical model includes measures of economic inequality,
particularly the Gini index of income inequality, and its effects are often

quite parallel to, and independent of, the effects of ethnic diversity. Generally
speaking, people who live in neighbourhoods of greater economic inequality
also tend to withdraw from social and civic life. On the other hand, the relation-
ships involving economic diversity seem to be somewhat more complex than
those involving ethnic diversity, which are the focus of our concern in this
article. First, the correlations between social capital and economic inequality
are less consistent than those between social capital and ethnic diversity.
Second, the correlations we find between economic inequality and social
capital appear to be non-linear, with some pronounced tipping points, unlike
the patterns involving ethnic diversity. Third, unlike ethnic diversity, the effects
of income inequality seem to be interactive at the tract and county levels.
Most fundamentally, however, economic inequality does not appear to be
a significant confounding variable in our analyses of ethnic diversity. First, as
I have already noted, our standard model directly controls for both income
inequality and poverty. Second, we have been able to discover no significant
interactive effects between economic inequality and ethnic diversity – that is,
our core finding that diversity produces hunkering is equally true both in
communities with great economic disparities and in those that are relatively
egalitarian. Economic inequality is very important, but it does not appear to
cause, amplify or obscure the apparent effects of ethnic diversity on social capital.
Pot-holes and Playgrounds

We considered the possibility that public amenities might be rarer in more
diverse neighbourhoods, perhaps for political reasons, and that this absence
of amenities (not diversity itself) might undermine social capital. Ethnically
homogeneous neighbourhoods might have a more congenial ratio of play-
grounds to pot-holes. We have found no perfect nationwide measures of
local amenities within each census tract, but we were able to construct several
ZIP-code-level measures of schools, libraries, civic associations, small
shops, sports clubs, religious institutions, day care facilities and other sites of
social interaction.34 If anything, such community resources turn out to be
positively correlated with ethnic diversity, so they cannot account for our
core finding, and in fact, when added to our standard model, do not.
Hierarchical Modelling
Our data set has a complicated, nested structure, including one large national
sample and 41 smaller community samples. One of the methodological
challenges is that the nested structure introduces the possibility of biased
standard errors since observations within each community are not inde-
pendent.35 Moreover, conventional multiple regression assumes that the
effect of the key explanatory variable (diversity, in our case) does not vary

from community to community, whereas, in fact, variation in reactions

to diversity from one community to another community is an open and
interesting question. To address this issue, we pursued four strategies:
• We replicated the analysis on the (N = 3,003) national sample alone. The

core results are fully confirmed, although the significance levels are
obviously attenuated by the smaller sample size.
• We ran the standard model separately within each community sample.
These samples are much smaller (and therefore more vulnerable to random
error). Moreover, variation in ethnic diversity is much lower within any
community than nationwide, and multicollinearity among contextual vari-
ables is a more serious problem within any given community. (Bismarck
has no rich, transient, Asian-American neighbourhoods, for example,
and Los Angeles has no poor, low-crime, all-white neighbourhoods.) Con-
sequently, standard errors are much higher in this setting. Nevertheless,
within 26 of the 41 community samples, diversity was associated with low
trust, controlling for all standard covariates, although the link achieved
conventional statistical significance in only a few cases.
• We estimated a random-intercept, random-coefficient Hierarchical
Linear Model (HLM) for the pooled, 41-site sample. This approach pro-
duces an estimate of the diversity effect that is essentially a weighted
average of the coefficients within each community. This estimate is highly
significant, though slightly lower than the full-sample OLS coefficient.
• Based on the estimated HLM model, we calculated the empirical Bayes
or shrinkage estimate of the effect of diversity on trust within each
community, and that effect is negative in 39 of the 41 communities. To be
sure, the negative effects of diversity seem to be more pronounced in some
communities than in others, and those differences across communities
should be quite instructive, so we intend to explore them more fully in
subsequent work. Nevertheless, the core finding that diversity encourages
hunkering seems highly robust.
In short, we have tried to test every conceivable artifactual explanation for

our core finding, and yet the pattern persists. Many Americans today are
uncomfortable with diversity.
One powerful limitation on this analysis, however, deserves more substan-
tial discussion, for it sheds an entirely new light on our central concern about
the effects of immigration and ethnic diversity on modern societies. All our
empirical analysis to this point has involved ‘comparative statics’ – that
is, we have compared people living in places with different ethnic mixes
at one point in time – namely different American communities in the year
2000.36 Although our evidence does suggest that it is the level of diversity that
matters, not the rate of change, we have not yet considered any ‘dynamic’

evidence about the effects of immigration and diversity over long periods of
time within a single place (whether a single community or the nation as a
whole). Exploring the dynamics, as opposed to the comparative statics, of
diversity and social capital requires entirely different methods, and my
research group has only begun to explore those avenues. For example, several
of my colleagues have undertaken case studies of the effects of immigration
and diversity over time on the social and political life of various local com-
munities in the United States.37 Moreover, we have only begun to explore
highly relevant evidence from such distant domains as experimental social
psychology and the history of previous waves of immigration. Thus, my
comments in the final third of this article are necessarily preliminary.
However, these ideas are, I believe, crucial to any final interpretation of our
‘comparative statics’ evidence.
Becoming Comfortable with Diversity

Social psychologists and sociologists have taught us that people find it easier
to trust one another and cooperate when the social distance between them
is less.38 ‘When social distance is small, there is a feeling of common identity,
closeness, and shared experiences. But when social distance is great, people
perceive and treat the other as belonging to a different category’ (Alba &
Nee 2003, 32). Social distance depends in turn on social identity: our sense
of who we are. Identity itself is socially constructed and can be socially
de-constructed and re-constructed. Indeed, this sort of social change happens
all the time in any dynamic and evolving society. For example, religious
evangelism, social mobilization and political campaigning all involve the
intentional transformation of identities.
Changed identity can also lead to changed behaviour. For example, the
more university graduates identify with their alma mater, the greater their
alumni donations (Mael & Ashforth 1992, as cited in Kramer 2006).
Although the linkage between identity and social capital is only beginning to
be explored, it is an important frontier for research. The relationship
between the two is almost certainly powerful and reciprocal: Whom you hang
out with probably affects who you think you are, and who you think you are
probably affects whom you hang out with.
Diversity itself can only be conceived in terms of socially constructed iden-
tities. We saw that earlier when we were forced to define ‘diversity’ in our
research in terms of the currently canonical four ethno-racial categories in
the United States Census. However, how people are assigned by others to
racial and ethnic categories has varied greatly over time and space. Thus,
adapting over time, dynamically, to immigration and diversity requires the
reconstruction of social identities, not merely of the immigrants themselves

(though assimilation is important), but also of the newly more diverse society
as a whole (including the native born).
Please allow me several personal anecdotes to illustrate that identities are
socially constructed and malleable. Several of my grandchildren were raised
in Costa Rica, the children of an American mother (my daughter) and a
Costa Rican father. A few years ago they moved to Pittsburgh and at the end
of the first week of school, my granddaughter Miriam came home and asked
my daughter: ‘People keep calling me “Hispanic.” What do they mean? I tell
them “No, I’m Costa Rican.”’ My daughter, a social historian by profession,
but also a mom, knew she had to answer the question seriously, and she
replied: ‘“Hispanic” is how North Americans refer to people whose parents
came from Latin America.’ ‘Oh,’ asked Miriam, ‘is Daddy Hispanic?’ ‘Yes,’
replied my daughter. After a pause, Miriam asked: ‘Are you Hispanic?’ and
my daughter replied ‘No.’ After a much longer pause came Miriam’s inevi-
table question: ‘Am I Hispanic?’ ‘That’s a difficult question, isn’t it?’ replied
my daughter. Miriam was learning about the complicated way in which
Americans today divide up the world, and in the process she was reconstructing
her own social identity.
A second story: I grew up in a small town in the Midwest in the 1950s. Of
the 150 students in my senior class, I knew the religion of virtually every one.
Even now, when I have long forgotten their names, I can generally remember
who was a Catholic, who was a Methodist and so on. Nor was that some
personal quirk of mine, because in fact most of my classmates knew everyone
else’s religion. My own children, who went to high school in the 1980s, knew
the religion of hardly any of their classmates. Why the difference? To solve the
mystery, you need to know that over those thirty years religious endogamy
(the practice of marrying only within one’s faith) has largely faded in
America, at least among mainline Protestants and Catholics and Jews. In the
1950s, for the most important aspect of any adolescent’s life – mating – it was
essential to keep track of one’s peers’ religious affiliations. By the 1980s,
religion was hardly more important than left- or right-handedness to
romance. Very few of us keep track of the handedness of other people
because it seldom matters to our social interactions. People know whether
they themselves are left- or right-handed, but it is not an important badge of
social identity. Similarly, though most Americans know their own religious
affiliation, for younger Americans that affiliation is less salient socially.
In that sense, Americans have more or less deconstructed religion as a
salient line of social division over the last half century, even though religion
itself remains personally important. In fact, our own survey evidence suggests
that for most Americans their religious identity is actually more important to
them than their ethnic identity, but the salience of religious differences as
lines of social identity has sharply diminished. As our religious identities
have become more permeable, we have gained much religiously bridging

social capital, while not forsaking our own religious loyalties. To be sure,
deconstructing divisive racial and ethnic identities will not be so quick and
simple, but an extraordinary achievement of human civilization is our ability
to redraw social lines in ways that transcend ancestry. It is my hypothesis that
a society will more easily reap the benefits of immigration, and overcome the
challenges, if immigration policy focuses on the reconstruction of ethnic
identities, reducing their social salience without eliminating their personal
importance. In particular, it seems important to encourage permeable,
syncretic, ‘hyphenated’ identities; identities that enable previously separate
ethnic groups to see themselves, in part, as members of a shared group with
a shared identity.39
To illustrate that this is not a purely platitudinous prescription, let me
mention briefly some historical success stories from my own country. First,
the United States Army today has become a relatively colour-blind institution.
Systematic surveys have shown that the average American soldier has many
closer inter-racial friendships than the average American civilian of the same
age and social class (United States Department of Defense 1997; Moskos &
Butler 1996). Yet barely thirty years ago the Army was not a race-relations
success story. During the Vietnam War, one heard frequently of inter-racial
‘fragging’ – that is, deadly attacks with fragmentation hand grenades among
soldiers of different races. We need to learn more details about this case, but
even this brief sketch suggests that something that the Army has actually
done during the last thirty years has had the effect of reconstructing social
identities and increasing social solidarity even in the presence of ethnic
diversity. Strict enforcement of anti-discrimination and anti-defamation
policies is a key part of the story, but I suspect that a new emphasis on shared
identities that cross racial lines may also have been important.
A second example is equally striking. Historically, Americans worshipped
in such complete racial segregation that it was proverbial among sociologists
of religion that ‘11:00 am Sunday is the most segregated hour in the week’. In
recent years, however, many churches, especially evangelical megachurches,
have become substantially more integrated in racial terms. During ongoing
research on the changing role of religion, my colleagues and I have attended
numerous services over the last several years in churches across America. In
many large evangelical congregations, the participants constituted the largest
thoroughly integrated gatherings we have ever witnessed. It remains true
that most church-goers in America (53 percent) report that all or almost all
of the people in their congregation are of the same race. However, younger
people and those who attend evangelical megachurches (and Catholic par-
ishes) report significantly more racial integration.40 It seems likely that this
undoing of past segregation is due, at least in part, to the construction of
religiously based identities that cut across (while not effacing) conventional
racial identities.

A last example is historically more complicated, but ultimately more

relevant to our contemporary interests. A century ago America also
experienced a large, sustained wave of immigration that massively increased
our ethnic diversity in traditional terms, with the arrival of millions of
immigrants of different ‘races’ – a term that then referred to the Italian and
Polish Catholics, Russian Jews and others who were swarming into a previously
White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP)-dominated society. Though I have
not found any comparable survey evidence for that period, my strong
suspicion is that that period also witnessed a good deal of hunkering, even
within the immigrant communities. Yet fifty years later, the grandchildren of
the WASPs and of the immigrants were comfortable in one another’s presence.
The best quantitative evidence concerns ethnic endogamy. At the turn of
the last century in-marriage was ‘castelike for new ethnics from east and
southern Europe’, whereas by 1990 only ‘one-fifth [of white Americans]
have spouses with identical [ethnic] backgrounds’.41 Conversely, the cultures
of the immigrant groups permeated the broader American cultural frame-
work, with the Americanization of St Patrick’s Day, pizza and ‘Jewish’ humour.
In some ways ‘they’ became like ‘us’, and in some ways our new ‘us’ incor-
porated ‘them’. This was no simple, inevitable, friction-less ‘straight-line’
assimilation, but over several generations the initial ethnic differences
became muted and less salient so that assimilation became the master trend
for these immigrant groups during the twentieth century.42
Recounting exactly how that happened would require another article
longer than this one. Such an essay would not tout the American experience
in the twentieth century as an undiluted triumph, but America has been, as
the historian David Hollinger (2000, 208) argues, ‘a formidable engine of
ethno-racial change’.43 ‘American identity’, observes Charles Hirschman, ‘is
rooted not in nationhood but rather in the welcoming of strangers’, as
embodied in the Statue of Liberty (Hirschman 2005: 595).
That longer article would also have to address the complicated racial
dynamics raised by so-called ‘whiteness studies’, or in the words of one leading
scholar: ‘how America’s immigrants became white’.44 This accommodation
of the immigrants is sometimes said to have coincided with increased
prejudice and discrimination against African-Americans, but was that link
causally necessary or merely coincidental? Such an article would need to
address the question of how the pace of assimilation was affected, if at all,
by the long pause in American immigration between 1924 and 1964. It would
explore the intriguing and unexpected history of American flag worship and
the Pledge of Allegiance, a civic practice that was sought by (among other
groups) American socialists as a way to symbolize that embracing American
ideals (‘one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all’) made you a
perfectly good American even if you were not a WASP (Ellis 2005). Such an
article would explore the effects of ‘Americanization’ in public schools, as

well as the transition in American nationalism during the 1930s and 1940s
from ‘ethnic nationalism’ to ‘civic nationalism’ (Mirel 2002). It would reckon
with the effects of the Second World War on American popular culture,
including the ubiquitous movie foxhole that always seemed (and not by accident)
to contain a Jew from Brooklyn, an Italian from Chicago and a Swede from
North Dakota. It would explore the role played by political parties and
religious institutions, especially the Catholic Church. It would grapple with
the divergent meanings of assimilation, and the fact that Americans today
are far more comfortable than Europeans with hyphens (Alba & Nee 2003;
Alba 2005). It would weigh potential differences between the twentieth- and
twenty-first-century waves of immigration, such as the possibly more visible
distinctiveness of contemporary migrants, the structural economic differences,
the increase of transnational ties, and the ideological and policy differences
(such as affirmative action) between the two eras.
And most fundamentally and most controversially, that longer historical
analysis would need to re-open one of the questions that I earlier set aside:
To what extent are the two different forms of diversity in America today
(i.e. that involving recent immigrants and that involving African-Americans)
really analogous? I have argued that the effects of these two forms of diver-
sity on social capital seem largely similar in contemporary America. The his-
torical origins of the two forms are, however, obviously different, and that
might well mean that the most effective public responses to the underlying
issues must also be different.
Some tough research questions have been raised by my analysis that I
have not yet answered. We need to learn more about the many possible
mechanisms – from physiological to political – that link diversity and hunker-
ing. We need to chart the conditions under which this linkage is strong, weak,
or even non-existent. Is it equally true in all countries, for example? Even
within the US, does diversity in the workplace or in church or in school have
the same effects as the neighbourhood diversity I have examined in this
article? We need to explore whether and when bonding and bridging social
capital might be negatively related, because in such circumstances diversity
could well produce a more classic in-group/out-group divide that I have not
found in the contemporary US. We need to examine more closely the inter-
action between economic and ethnic diversity, asking whether diversity may
have a more deleterious effect when ethnic divisions coincide more fully with
economic ones. And most fundamentally, we need much more systematic
research to confirm the hypotheses in this third section of my essay linking
institutions, identity, and social capital.
So, this article is but a prolegomenon to a larger project on how to manage
the challenge that immigration and diversity pose to social capital and
solidarity. Nevertheless, my hunch is that at the end we shall see that the
challenge is best met not by making ‘them’ like ‘us’, but rather by creating a

new, more capacious sense of ‘we’, a reconstruction of diversity that does not
bleach out ethnic specificities, but creates overarching identities that ensure
that those specificities do not trigger the allergic, ‘hunker down’ reaction.45
In this I share the view expressed by Trevor Phillips, chair of the British
Commission on Equality and Human Rights, who has been quoted as saying:
‘We need to respect people’s ethnicity but also give them, at some point
in the week, an opportunity to meet and want to be with people with
whom they have something in common that is not defined by their ethnicity’
(Easton 2006).
My argument here is that in the short run there is a tradeoff between diver-
sity and community, but that over time wise policies (public and private) can
ameliorate that tradeoff. Even while pressing forward with research to
confirm and clarify these arguments, we must also begin to ask about their
implications for public policy. This is surely not the place for a compre-
hensive proposal for immigration reform, but a few comments may illustrate
the policy directions suggested by my analysis.
Immigration policy is not just about numbers and borders. It is also about
fostering a sense of shared citizenship. Whatever decisions we reach on
numbers and borders, America is in the midst of renewing our historical
identity as a nation of immigrants, and we must remind ourselves how to be
a successful immigrant nation.
• Tolerance for difference is but a first step. To strengthen shared identities,

we need more opportunities for meaningful interaction across ethnic lines
where Americans (new and old) work, learn, recreate, and live. Commu-
nity centers, athletic fields, and schools were among the most efficacious
instruments for incorporating new immigrants a century ago, and we need
to reinvest in such places and activities once again, enabling us all to
become comfortable with diversity.
• Most immigrants want to acculturate – to learn English, for example.
Expanding public support for English-language training, especially in set-
tings that encourage ties among immigrants and natives of diverse ethnic
backgrounds, should be a high priority.
• Since the long-run benefits of immigration and diversity are often felt at
the national level (scientific creativity, fiscal dividends, and so forth),
whereas the short-run costs (fragile communities, educational and health
costs, for example) are often concentrated at the local level, there is a
strong case for national aid to affected localities.
• Our field studies suggest that locally based programs to reach out to new
immigrant communities are a powerful tool for mutual learning. Religious
institutions – and in our era, as a century ago, especially the Catholic
church – have a major role to play in incorporating new immigrants and
then forging shared identities across ethnic boundaries. Ethnically defined

social groups (such the Sons of Norway or the Knights of Columbus or

Jewish immigrant aid societies) were important initial steps toward immi-
grant civic engagement a century ago. Bonding social capital can thus be
a prelude to bridging social capital, rather than precluding it. To force
civic and religious groups who work with immigrants to serve as enforce-
ment tools for immigration laws, as some have suggested, would be
exceptionally counterproductive to the goal of creating an integrated
nation of immigrants.
But we need to work toward bridging, as well as bonding. Senator Barack

Obama, whose life story embodies ties between immigrant and native-born
America, has called for
. . . an America where race is understood in the same way that the ethnic diversity of the
white population is understood. People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-
American. They have a particular culture that infuses the (whole) culture and makes it richer
and more interesting. But it’s not something that determines people’s life chances and there
is no sense of superiority or inferiority. . . . [I]f we can expand that attitude to embrace
African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then . . . all our kids can
feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something
larger. (Obama 2007)
Scientific examination of immigration, diversity and social cohesion easily

could be inflamed as the results of research become part of the contemporary
political debate, but that debate needs to be informed by our best efforts to
ascertain the facts. It would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism
were to deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diver-
sity. It would be equally unfortunate if an ahistorical and ethnocentric
conservatism were to deny that addressing that challenge is both feasible and
desirable. Max Weber instructed would-be political leaders nearly a century
ago that ‘Politics is a slow boring of hard boards.’ The task of becoming
comfortable with diversity will not be easy or quick, but it will be speeded by
our collective efforts and in the end well worth the effort. One great achieve-
ment of human civilization is our ability to redraw more inclusive lines of
social identity. The motto on the Great Seal of the United States (and on our
dollar bill) and the title of this essay – e pluribus unum – reflects precisely that
objective – namely to create a novel ‘one’ out of a diverse ‘many’.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The roster of colleagues who have made important contributions to this project is too long
to list here, but crucial roles have been played by Tom Sander, Chris Achen, Mahzarin
Banaji, Amy Bates, Mark Beissinger, Josh Bolian, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Tami Buhr,
Karena Cronin, Ben Deufel, John DiIulio, Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Lew Feldstein, Shaylyn
Romney Garrett, Marty Gilens, Dan Hopkins, Darby Jack, Louise Kennedy, Andrew Leigh,
Chaeyoon Lim, Gabriel Loiacono, Sean McGraw, Byron Miller, Matt Pehl, Lara Putnam, Pedro
Ramos-Pinto, Steve Resch, Nate Schwartz, Thomas Soehl, Anant Thaker, Van Tran, Jessica

Wellburn, Abby Williamson and Catherine Wreyford. I am also grateful for the generous
support of the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Founda-
tion and more than three dozen community foundations that funded the 2000 Social Capital
Community Benchmark Survey.
NOTES
1. This article summarizes initial results from a longer-term project. My colleagues and I
will elaborate on our evidence and argument in subsequent publications. My intention
here is to provide enough evidence that others can evaluate our argument and provide
instructive commentary and criticism.
2. See Putnam (2000, 18–24) for a discussion of the concept of ‘social capital’.
3. For a thorough, nuanced analysis of diversity as a social and political value, see Schuck
(2003).
4. Smith and Edmonston (1997, Chapters 4 and 5); Ottaviano and Peri (2006a, 2006b). The
two poles in the debate about the wage impact of immigration on natives are George
Borjas (immigration reduces low-skilled native wages) and David Card (immigration
raises all Americans’ wages). Some key cites from this literature are: Borjas and
Aydemir (2006); Borjas (1987, 2003, 2005); Card (1990, 2001, 2005); Card and DiNardo
(2000); Engerman and Jones (1997); Borjas et al. (1992, 1996); Friedberg and Hunt
(1995); Butcher and Card (1991). For a broader review of the economic consequences
of ethnic diversity, see Alesina and La Ferrara (2005).
5. This fiscal effect is off-set in part by the cost of educating the children of immigrants.
Since in the U.S. education is mostly financed at the state and local levels, the net fiscal
effect at these levels is typically negative.
6. Four conditions are often said to be necessary for the contact theory to hold: common
goals, inter-group cooperation, equal status, and authority sanction and support. The
classic explication of the contact theory is Allport (1954). For recent developments of
the theory, see Pettigrew and Tropp (2000, 2006); Tropp and Pettigrew (2005a, 2005b).
See also Pettigrew (1968); Sigelman and Welch (1993); Stein et al. (2000). For critiques
of contact theory, see Dixon et al. (2005); Dovidio et al. (2003).
7. Of course, one can artificially create a zero-sum relationship between bridging and
bonding by asking what proportion of, say, friendships are bridging or bonding, or about
relative trust of in-groups and out-groups, but the result is a mathematical trick, not an
empirical finding.
8. This generalization is based on our extensive analysis of the 2000 Social Capital
Community Benchmark Survey described later in this article.
9. An important exception to this critique is Brewer (1999), who emphasizes that in-group
and out-group attitudes can be independent of one another.
10. The 41 community sites were not chosen strictly randomly, but reflected our ability to
raise local funds to cover local costs in as wide an array of communities as we could
manage. Nevertheless, extensive analysis has failed to unearth any significant differ-
ences between the nationally representative sample of 3,000 and the aggregate of the 41
local sites (N~27,000), either in frequency distributions or in relations among variables.
Thus, for practical purposes, we treat the entire sample of 30,000 as a single nationwide
sample, while confirming key generalizations on the nationally representative sample of
3,000. Several sites, as well as the national sample, over-sampled African-Americans
and Latinos. We used both English- and Spanish-speaking interviewers, so we have an
unusually broad sample of Latino respondents. All analyses reported here are based on
data weighted to reflect population cross-distributions on race, age, education and gen-
der. The AAPOR RR3 response rate was 27.4 percent across all communities, fairly
typical for random-digit dialing telephone interviews nowadays. On the effects (often
surprisingly small) of response rates on response bias, see Groves (2006). Having
explored the representativeness of these data, we believe that the only significant defect

is that the responses are modestly (5–10 percent) biased in a ‘pro-community’ direction,
probably due to a contextual effect that enhanced normal social desirability bias – that is,
since the interview spent 30 minutes on questions of trust and community involvement, some
respondents focused on the attractions and duties of community more than they other-
wise might have done.
11. A United States census tract has an average of roughly 4,000 inhabitants, so it can be
thought of as a large neighbourhood. Census tract boundaries are generally drawn to reflect
local opinion about real neighbourhoods, though inevitably there is slippage in this effort.
12. Respondents were asked: ‘(How about) White people (would you say you can you trust
them a lot, some, only a little, or not at all)?’ ‘How about African-Americans or blacks?’
‘How about Hispanics or Latinos?’ ‘How about Asian people?’ Question order was
randomized.
13. Our measure of ethnic homogeneity is a Herfindahl index calculated across the four
basic ethnic categories. This standard measure is best interpreted as the likelihood that
any two individuals randomly selected from a given community will be from the same
category. We replicated our results using another plausible measure of ethnic diversity,
García-Montalvo and Reynal-Querol’s (2005) index of polarization, and the results are
virtually identical.
14. I say ‘in its simplest form,’ because the more complicated version of contact theory
maintains that contact enhances trust only under highly specific conditions: common
goals, inter-group cooperation and so forth. As those conditions are narrowed, however,
contact theory itself approaches tautology.
15. Figure 6 is based on subtracting ‘other’ from ‘own’ racial trust, each as measured on a
4-point scale.
16. Each of the following generalizations is based not merely on the sort of bivariate aggre-
gate analysis presented in Figures 3 to 6, but on exhaustive multivariate, individual-level
analyses as described below.
17. The questions were: ‘How much of the time do you think you can trust the local
government to do what is right – just about always, most of the time, only some of the
time, or hardly ever?’ ‘Do you agree strongly, agree somewhat, disagree somewhat, or
disagree strongly: The people running my community don’t really care much what
happens to me?’ ‘Would you say you can you trust the local news media a lot, some, only
a little, or not at all?’ Census tract diversity is not related to trust in national govern-
ment, implying that people distinguish (sensibly) between the effects of local diversity
on local institutions and the non-effects of local diversity on national institutions.
18. The question was: ‘Overall, how much impact do you think people like you can have in
making your community a better place to live – no impact at all, a small impact, a
moderate impact, or a big impact?’
19. The questions were: ‘Are you currently registered to vote?’ ‘How interested are you in
politics and national affairs – very interested, somewhat interested, only slightly interested,
or not at all interested?’ ‘Could you tell me the names of the two US Senators from your
state?’ ‘Have you in the last twelve months participated in any demonstrations, protests,
boycotts, or marches?’ ‘Did any of the groups that you are involved with take any local
action for social or political reform in the past 12 months?’
20. The question was: ‘Now I’d like to ask you a few questions about the local community
where you live. If public officials asked everyone to conserve water or electricity
because of some emergency, how likely is it that people in your community would
cooperate – very likely, likely, unlikely, or very unlikely?’
21. The question was: ‘Have you in the last twelve months . . . worked on a community
project?’
22. The measure here is a factor score index combining questions about contributions to
charity and frequency of volunteering.
23. The questions were: ‘Right now, how many people do you have in your life with whom
you can share confidences or discuss a difficult decision – nobody, one, two, or three or
more?’ ‘About how many close friends do you have these days? These are people
you feel at ease with, can talk to about private matters, or call on for help. Would you
say that you have no close friends, one or two, three to five, six to ten, or more than that?’

24. The questions were: ‘Overall, how would you rate your community as a place to live –
excellent, good, only fair, or poor?’ ‘All things considered, would you say you are very
happy, happy, not very happy, or not happy at all?’ In recent years, psychologists and
economists have produced a sophisticated literature on the determinants of happiness.
It is generally agreed that social connectivity (family, friends and community involve-
ment) is a powerful determinant, so this simple question turns out to be a good, indirect
measure of social capital. For overviews of this burgeoning field, see Diener (2000);
Layard (2005); Kahneman et al. (1999); Myers and Diener (1995); Blanchflower and
Oswald (2004); Powdthavee (2006); Helliwell (2006); Helliwell and Putnam (2004).
25. The questions were: ‘How many hours per day do you spend watching television on an
average weekday, that is, Monday through Friday?’ ‘Do you agree/disagree with the
statement that “Television is my most important form of entertainment”’.
26. For a recent empirical assessment of the links between ethnic diversity and political
engagement (or ‘citizenship behavior’), including a review of previous political science
treatments of that issue, see Anderson & Paskeviciute (2006). For the argument that
heterogeneity enhances some forms of political engagement, while dampening others,
see Campbell (2006).
27. I set aside for fuller analysis in a subsequent publication one important dimension of
social capital – namely, inter-racial friendships. At first glance, ethnic diversity is posi-
tively correlated with inter-racial friendships. However, to some extent, that correlation
represents a quasi-tautological ‘pool’ effect: It is obviously much easier, even randomly,
for whites who live in Harlem to have black friends than it is for whites who live in
virtually all-white Duluth, Minnesota. When we control for that structural constraint
(e.g. by calculating the odds that any respondent would encounter people of other races
simply randomly in their local community), then inter-racial friendships (apart from that
structural constraint on opportunities for contact) appear to be actually more common
in less diverse settings. The statistical methodology for this analysis is, however, far from
straightforward, so I forebear from pursuing the issue here. For a useful introduction to
this general issue, see McPherson et al. (2001).
28. The county is the lowest geographical level at which crime rates in America are consistently
reported.
29. We have also undertaken some empirical tests of selection bias. For example, since higher
SES people are less constrained in housing markets, any selection bias should be concentrated
among them. However, our core findings are equally found among upper and lower SES
respondents. We also used our respondents’ reported likelihood of staying in their com-
munity over the next five years to explore whether low-trust individuals are poised to flee
homogeneous communities, as the selection-bias story implies. In general, low-trust people
say they are less likely to stay put, but this is equally true in homogeneous and heterogeneous
neighbourhoods. Finally, for some indicators, such as trust and friendship, the effects of
diversity are higher among long-term residents. In no case are the effects higher among
recent arrivals. This, too, argues against a selection bias explanation for our key findings.
30. One partial exception to this generalization involves religious involvement. Using
our standard multivariate, multilevel model, tract-level homogeneity tends to predict
slightly higher religious involvement, whereas county-level homogeneity tends to
predict lower religious involvement. This anomalous pattern appears to reflect regional
differences in religiosity.
31. Whereas the average census tract has a population of roughly 4,000, the average county
has a population of roughly 80,000.
32. Necessarily our survey measure of trust (based on the aggregated DDB survey agree-
disagree item ‘most people are honest’) under-represents less populous counties
nationwide, so this confirmatory analysis is limited to the 444 most populous counties.
Given the noise in both measures, the correlation between the RGF measure and the
DDB measure is quite strong (r = 0.37).
33. Details available upon request from the author.
34. I am grateful to Mario Luis Small for pointing us to these data.
35. On analyzing clustered data and hierarchical linear modeling, see Singer (1998);
Raudenbush and Bryk (2002); Gelman and Hill (2007). In addition to the strategies

outlined in the text, we have adjusted standard errors for intragroup correlation within
each community sample and with the exception of one composite measure of volunteer-
ing and giving to charity, census tract ethnic heterogeneity remains a highly significant
predictor across a dozen diverse indicators of trust and sociability.
36. We have explored whether ‘old’ diversity is different from ‘new’ diversity by examining
differences between neighbourhoods that were already diverse in the 1980 and 1990
censuses and neighbourhoods that had become diverse only in 2000. Although our
examination of such ‘lagged’ effects is incomplete, we have so far discovered no evidence
that over a span of these two decades ‘older’ diversity has become any less likely to trigger
the ‘hunkering’ reaction than more recent diversity.
37. Benjamin Deufel has explored the impact of Latino immigration into five mid-sized
towns in Minnesota, Iowa and North Carolina – so-called ‘new destination’ immigration.
Abby Williamson is exploring the impact of both sudden and gradual immigration on
the social and political life of a half dozen towns from Lewiston, Maine, to Yakima,
Washington. Their work, though still in progress, makes clear that the effects of immi-
gration and diversity over time vary widely from place to place and that those effects
depend in part on policies, public and private, within the receiving communities.
38. Social psychology also suggests that neighbourhood heterogeneity may lead to lower pre-
dictability of social behavior and thus to ‘information overload’. (This literature builds
on Milgram (1970). I am grateful to Daniel Gilbert for pointing me to this literature.)
Information overload in turn leads to systemic shutdown, the physiological counterpart
of ‘hunkering down’. In short, unfamiliar difference in the social environment may lead
to withdrawal. We intend to explore this avenue in subsequent research.
39. My approach here is akin to the ‘post-ethnic’ perspective offered by Hollinger (2000).
For a useful overview of this process, see Foner and Alba (2006).
40. I shall provide detailed evidence on racial integration in American churches in a
forthcoming book on the changing role of religion in American society. The quantitative
evidence I report here is drawn from a national survey on religion and civic life
conducted in 2006 among 3,000 Americans.
41. Paginini and Morgan (1990) and Alba (1995), both as cited in Smith and Edmonston
(1997, 369).
42. On this assimilation process, see Gordon (1964); Hirschman (2005); Lieberson (1980);
Alba and Nee (2003).
43. Greeley (1976) described the integration of white ethnics into the changing American
mix over the first half of the twentieth century as an ‘ethnic miracle’.
44. See Roediger (1991, 2005); King (2000); Ignatiev (1996); Jacobson (1998). A useful
review of the whiteness studies is McDermott and Samson (2005). Critical responses
include Arnesen (2001); Kolchin (2002); Guglielmo (2005); and Alba and Tsao (2007).
45. For a historically sophisticated account of these issues, see Hollinger (2000). My
argument that the effects of diversity on social capital may be moderated by policies that
transform and reinforce national identity is consistent with Miguel (2004), who finds
that ethnic diversity dampens the provision of public goods in Kenya, but not in
Tanzania, which pursued more serious nation-building policies.
REFERENCES
Alba, R. 1995. ‘Assimilation’s Quiet Tide’, The Public Interest 119, 1–18.
Alba, R. 2005. ‘Bright vs Blurred Boundaries: Second-generation Assimilation and Exclusion
in France, Germany and the United States’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, 20 – 49.
Alba, R. & Nee, V. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary
Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Alba, R. & Tsao, H-S. 2007. ‘Connecting Past, Present and Future: Reflections on Immigration
and the Possibilities for Racial and Ethnic Change in the US’, unpublished, Albany, SUNY.
Alesina, A. & La Ferrara, E. 2000. ‘Participation in Heterogeneous Communities’, Quarterly
Journal of Economics 115, 847–904.
Alesina, A. & La Ferrara, E. 2002. ‘Who Trusts Others?’, Journal of Public Economics 85, 207– 34.

Alesina, A. & La Ferrara, E. 2005. ‘Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance’, Journal of
Economic Literature 43, 762– 800.
Alesina, A., Baqir, R. & Easterly, W. 1999. ‘Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions’, Quarterly
Journal of Economics 114, 1243–84.
Allport, G. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Anderson, C. J. & Paskeviciute, A. 2006. ‘How Ethnic and Linguistic Heterogeneity Influence
the Prospects for Civil Society: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Behavior’, Journal of
Politics 68, 783 – 802.
Arnesen, E. 2001. ‘Whiteness and the Historians’ Imagination’, International Labor and Working-
class History 60, 3 –32.
Berkman, L. F. 1995. ‘The Role of Social Relations in Health Promotion’, Psychosomatic
Medicine 57, 245 – 54.
Berkman, L. F. & Glass, T. 2000. ‘Social Integration, Social Networks, Social Support and
Health’, in Berkman, L. F. & Kawachi, I., eds, Social Epidemiology. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Blalock, H. M. Jr. 1967. Toward a Theory of Minority-group Relations. New York: John Wiley
& Sons.
Blanchflower, D. G. & Oswald, A. J. 2004. ‘Well-being Over Time in Britain and the USA’,
Journal of Public Economics 88, 1359–86.
Blumer, H. 1958. ‘Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position’, Pacific Sociological Review 1,
3–7.
Bobo, L. D. 1999. ‘Prejudice as Group Position: Microfoundations of a Sociological Approach
to Racism and Race Relations’, Journal of Social Issues 55, 445 –72.
Bobo, L. D. & Tuan, M. 2006. Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion and the
Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Borjas, G. J. 1987. ‘Immigrants, Minorities and Labor Market Competition’, Industrial and
Labor Relations Review 40, 382–92.
Borjas, G. J. 2003. ‘The Labor Demand Curve is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact
of Immigration on the Labor Market’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, 1335 –74.
Borjas, G. J. 2005. Native Internal Migration and the Labor Market Impact of Immigration.
NBER Working Paper 11610. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Borjas, G. J. & Aydemir, A. 2006. A Comparative Analysis of the Labor Market Impact of Inter-
national Migration: Canada, Mexico and the United States. NBER Working Paper 12327.
Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Borjas, G. J., Freeman, R. B. & Katz, L. F. 1992. ‘On the Labor Market Effects of Immigration
and Trade’, in Borjas, G. J. & Freeman, R. B., eds, Immigration and the Work Force: Economic
Consequences for the United States and Source Areas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Borjas, G. J., Freeman, R. B. & Katz, L. F. 1996. ‘Searching for the Effect of Immigration on
the Labor Market’, American Economic Review 86, 246–51.
Bouckaert, J. & Dhaene, G. 2004. ‘Inter-ethnic Trust and Reciprocity: Results of an Experi-
ment with Small Businessmen’, European Journal of Political Economy 20, 869 – 86.
Brewer, M. 1999. ‘The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate’, Journal of
Social Issues 55, 429 – 44.
Brewer, M. B. & Brown, R. J. 1998. ‘Intergroup Relations’, in Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T. &
Lindzey, G., eds, Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th edn. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Burt, R. S. 1992. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Burt, R. S. 1997. ‘The Contingent Value of Social Capital’, Administrative Science Quarterly 42,
339–65.
Butcher, K. F. & Card, D. 1991. ‘Immigration and Wages: Evidence from the 1980s’, American
Economic Review 81, 292–6.
Campbell, D. E. 2006. Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Card, D. 1990. ‘The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market’, Industrial and
Labor Relations Review 43, 245–57.

Card, D. 2001. ‘Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows and the Local Labor Market Impacts of
Higher Immigration’, Journal of Labor Economics 19, 22– 64.
Card, D. 2005. Is the New Immigration Really So Bad? NBER Working Paper 11547.
Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Card, D. & DiNardo, J. 2000. ‘Do Immigrant Inflows Lead to Native Outflows?’, American
Economic Review 90, 360–7.
Charles, K. & Kline, P. 2002. Relational Costs and the Production of Social Capital: Evidence
from Carpooling. NBER Working Paper 9041. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of
Economic Research.
Cohen, S. G. & Bailey, D. E. 1997. ‘What Makes Teams Work: Group Effectiveness Research
from the Shop Floor to the Executive Suite’, Journal of Management 23, 239 – 90.
Costa, D. L. & Kahn, M. E. 2003a. ‘Cowards and Heroes: Group Loyalty in the American Civil
War’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, 519–48.
Costa, D. L. & Kahn, M. E. 2003b. ‘Civic Engagement and Community Heterogeneity: An
Economist’s Perspective’, Perspectives on Politics 1, 103–11.
Diener, E. 2000. ‘Subjective Well-being: The Science of Happiness and a Proposal for a
National Index’, American Psychologist 55, 34–43.
Dixon, J., Durrheim, K. & Tredoux, C. 2005. ‘Beyond the Optimal Contact Strategy: A Reality
Check for the Contact Hypothesis’, American Psychologist 60, 697 –711.
Dovidio, J. R., Gaertner, S. L. & Kawakami, K. 2003. ‘Intergroup Contact: The Past, Present
and the Future’, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 6, 5 –21.
Easton, M. 2006. ‘Does Diversity Make Us Unhappy?’, BBC News, 26 June 26. Interview of
Trevor Phillips for the BBC’s The Happiness Formula.
Eckel, C. & Grossman, P. 2001. ‘Chivalry and Solidarity in Ultimatum Games’, Economic
Inquiry 39, 171–88.
Ellis, R. J. 2005. To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance. Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas.
Engerman, S. L. & Jones, R. W. 1997. ‘International Labor Flows and National Wages’,
American Economic Review 87, 200 – 4.
Fershtman, C. & Gneezy, U. 2001. ‘Discrimination in a Segmented Society: An Experimental
Approach’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 116, 351–77.
Foner, N. & Alba, R. 2006. ‘The Second Generation from the Last Great Wave of Immigration:
Setting the Record Straight’. Migration Information Source. http://www.migrationinformation.org/
feature/display.cfm?ID=439.
Friedberg, R. M. & Hunt, J. 1995. ‘The Impact of Immigrants on Host Country Wages,
Employment and Growth’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, 23 – 45.
Garcia-Montalvo, J. & Reynal-Querol, M. 2005. ‘Ethnic Diversity and Economic Development’,
Journal of Development Economics 76, 293–323.
Gelman, A. & Hill, J. 2007. Data Analysis using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Giles, M. W. & Evans, A. 1986. ‘The Power Approach to Intergroup Hostility’, Journal of Con-
flict Resolution 30, 469– 85.
Gil-White, F. 2004. ‘Ultimatum Game with an Ethnicity Manipulation: Results from Kohvdiin
Bulgan Sum, Mongolia’, in Henrich, J. et al., eds, Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic
Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale Societies. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Glaeser, E. & Alesina, A. 2004. Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glaeser, E. L. et al. 2000. ‘Measuring Trust’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 115, 811– 46.
Gordon, M. M. 1964. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National
Origins. New York: Oxford University Press.
Granovetter, M. S. 1973. ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 78, 1360 – 80.
Granovetter, M. S. 1974. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Greeley, A. M. 1976. Ethnicity, Denomination and Inequality. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Groves, R. M. 2006. ‘Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias in Household Surveys’, Public
Opinion Quarterly 70, 646–75.

Guglielmo, T. A. 2003. White on Arrival: Race, Color and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Habyarimana, J. P. et al. 2006. Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?
An Experimental Approach. IZA Discussion Paper 2272. Bonn: Institute for the Study of
Labor.
Helliwell, J. F. 2006. ‘Well-being, Social Capital and Public Policy: What’s New?’, Economic
Journal 116, C34–C45.
Helliwell, J. F. & Putnam, R. D. 2004. ‘The Social Context of Well-being’, Philosophical Trans-
actions of the Royal Society B: Biological Studies 359, 1435–46. Reprinted in Huppert, F. A.,
Kaverne, B. & Baylis, N., eds. 2005. The Science of Well-being. London: Oxford University Press.
Hirschman, C. 2005. ‘Immigration and the American Century’, Demography 42, 595– 620.
Hollinger, D. 2000. Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books.
Hooghe, M. et al. 2006. ‘Ethnic Diversity, Trust and Ethnocentrism and Europe: A Multilevel
Analysis of 21 European Countries’. Unpublished paper presented at American Political
Science Association Annual Meeting.
House, J. S., Landis, K. R. & Umberson, D. 1988. ‘Social Relationships and Health’, Science
241, 540 –5.
Ignatiev, N. 1996. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge.
Jackson, S. et al. 1991. ‘Some Differences Make a Difference: Individual Dissimilarity and
Group Heterogeneity as Correlates of Recruitment, Promotions and Turnover’, Journal of
Applied Psychology 76, 675–89.
Jacobson, M. F. 1998. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of
Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Johansson-Stenman, O., Martinsson, P. & Mahmud, M. 2005. Trust, Trust Games and Stated
Trust: Evidence from Rural Bangladesh. Working Paper 166. Goteborg: Goteborg University.
Jordahl, H. & Gustavsson, M. 2006. Inequality and Trust in Sweden: Some Inequalities are More
Harmful than Others. Ratio Working Paper 106. Stockholm: Ratio.
Kahneman, D., Diener, E. & Schwarz, N., eds. 1999. Well-being: The Foundations of Hedonic
Psychology. New York: Russell Sage.
Karlan, D. 2002. ‘Social Capital and Group Banking’. Unpublished manuscript, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Keller, R. T. 2001. ‘Cross-functional Project Groups in Research and New Product Development:
Diversity, Communications, Job Stress and Outcomes’, Academy of Management Journal 44,
547–55.
Khwaja, A. I. 2006. ‘Can Good Projects Succeed in Bad Communities?’ Harvard University,
Kennedy School of Government Working Papers. http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~akhwaja/
papers/BaltNov06.pdf.
King, D. 2000. Making Americans: Immigration, Race and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kolchin, P. 2002 ‘Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America’, Journal of
American History 89, 154–73.
Kramer, R. 2006. ‘Social Identity and Social Capital: The Collective Self at Work’, International
Journal of Public Management 9, 25–45.
Layard, P. R. G. 2005. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. New York: Penguin.
Leigh, A. 2006. ‘Trust, Inequality and Ethnic Heterogeneity’, Economic Record 82, 268 – 80.
Lerner, J. & Roy, R. 1984. ‘Numbers, Origins, Economic Value and Quality of Technically
Trained Immigrants into the United States’, Scientometrics 6, 243–59.
Letki, N. forthcoming. ‘Does Diversity Erode Social Cohesion? Social Capital and Race in
British Neighbourhoods’, Political Studies.
Lieberson, S. 1980. A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants since 1880. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Lin, N. 1999. ‘Social Networks and Status Attainment’, Annual Review of Sociology 25, 467– 87.
Lin, N. 2001. Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Mael, F. & Ashforth, B. E. 1992. ‘Alumni and Their Alma Mater: A Partial Test of the
Reformulated Model of Organizational Identification’, Journal of Organizational Behavior
13, 103–23.

McDermott, M. & Samson, F. L. 2005. ‘White Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States’,
Annual Review of Sociology 31, 245– 61.
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L. & Cook, J. M. 2001. ‘Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social
Networks’, Annual Review of Sociology 27, 415– 44.
Miguel, E. 2004. ‘Tribe or Nation? Nation Building and Public Goods in Kenya versus Tanzania’,
World Politics 56, 327– 62.
Miguel, E. & Gugerty, M. K. 2005. ‘Ethnic Diversity, Social Sanctions and Public Goods in
Kenya’, Journal of Public Economics 89, 2325–68.
Milgram, S. 1970. ‘The Experience of Living in Cities’, Science 167, 1461– 8.
Mirel, J. 2002. ‘Civic Education and Changing Definitions of American Identity, 1900 –1950’,
Educational Review 54, 143–52.
Moskos, C. C. & Butler, J. S. 1996. All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integra-
tion the Army Way. New York: Basic Books.
Myers, D. G. & Diener, E. 1995. ‘Who is Happy?’, Psychological Science 6, 10 –19.
Newton, K. & Delhey, J. 2005. ‘Predicting Cross-national Levels of Social Trust: Global Pat-
tern or Nordic Exceptionalism?’, European Sociological Review 21, 311– 27.
Obama, B. 2007. ‘I Have the Potential of Bringing People Together’. Politico 8 February, at
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2689.html.
O’Reilly, C., Williams, R. K. & Barsage, S. 1997. ‘Group Demography and Innovation: Does
Diversity Help?’, in Mannix, E. & Neale, M., eds, Research in the Management of Groups and
Teams, vol. 1. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Ottaviano, G. I. P. & Peri, G. 2006a. ‘The Economic Value of Cultural Diversity: Evidence
from US Cities’, Journal of Economic Geography 6, 9– 44.
Ottaviano, G. I. P. & Peri, G. 2006b. Rethinking the Effects of Immigration on Wages. NBER
Working Paper 12497. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Page, S. 2007. The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools
and Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Paginini, D. L. & Morgan, S. P. 1990. ‘Intermarriage and Social Distance among US Immi-
grants at the Turn of the Century’, American Journal of Sociology 96, 405–32.
Pennant, R. 2005. Diversity, Trust and Community Participation in England. Home Office Find-
ings 253, Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. Available online at: http://
www.blink.org.uk/docs/ho_findings_diversity_trust.pdf.
Pettigrew, T. F. 1998. ‘Intergroup Contact Theory’, Annual Review of Psychology 49, 68– 85.
Pettigrew, T. F. & Tropp, L. R. 2000. ‘Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? Recent
Meta-analytic Findings’, in Oskamp, S., ed., Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Pettigrew, T. F. & Tropp, L. R. 2006. ‘A Meta-analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory’,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90, 751– 83.
Poterba, J. M. 1997. ‘Demographic Structure and the Political Economy of Public Education’,
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 16, 48–66.
Powdthavee, N. 2006. ‘Putting a Price Tag on Friends, Relatives and Neighbours: Using
Surveys of Life Satisfaction to Value Social Relationships’. Unpublished manuscript, Institute
of Education, University of London.
Pritchett, L. 2006. Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on International Labor Mobility.
Washington, DC: Center for Global Development.
Putnam, R. D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Quillian, L. 1995. ‘Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat: Population Composition and
Anti-immigrant and Racial Prejudice in Europe’, American Sociological Review 60, 586 – 611.
Quillian, L. 1996. ‘Group Threat and Regional Change in Attitudes towards African Americans’,
American Journal of Sociology 102, 816–60.
Raudenbush, S. W. & Bryk, A. S. 2002. Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data
Analysis Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Roediger, D. R. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working
Class. London: Verso.
Roediger, D. R. 2005. Working Toward Whiteness: How American Immigrants Became White.
New York: Basic Books.

Rupasingha, A., Goetz, S. J. & Freshwater, D. 2006. ‘The Production of Social Capital in US
Counties’, Journal of Socio-Economics 35, 83–101.
Sampson, R. J. 2001. ‘Crime and Public Safety: Insights from Community-level Perspectives on
Social Capital,’ in Saegert, S., Thompson, J. P. & Warren, M. R., eds, Social Capital and Poor
Communities. New York: Russell Sage.
Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W. & Earls, F. 1997. ‘Neighbourhoods and Violent Crime: A
Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy’, Science 277, 918–24.
Schuck, P. 2003. Diversity in America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Seeman, T. E. 1996. ‘Social Ties and Health: The Benefits of Social Integration’, Annals of
Epidemiology 6, 442–51.
Sigelman, L. & Welch, S. 1993. ‘The Contact Hypothesis Revisited: Black-White Interaction
and Positive Racial Attitudes’, Social Forces 71, 781–95.
Simonton, D. K. 1999. Origins of Genius. New York: Oxford University Press.
Singer, J. D. 1998. ‘Using SAS PROC MIXED to Fit Multilevel Models, Hierarchical Models
and Individual Growth Models’, Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics 24, 323 –55.
Smith, J. P. & Edmonston, B., eds. 1997. The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and
Fiscal Effects of Immigration. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Soroka, S. N., Helliwell, J. F. & Johnston, R. 2007. ‘Measuring and Modeling Interpersonal
Trust’, in Kay, F. M. & Johnston, R., eds, Social Capital, Diversity and the Welfare State. Van-
couver: UBC Press.
Stein, R. M., Post, S. S. & Rinden, A. L. 2000. ‘Reconciling Context and Contact Effects on
Racial Attitudes’, Political Research Quarterly 53, 285–303.
Stouffer, S. 1949. American Soldier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, M. 1998. ‘Local Racial/Ethnic Proportions and White Attitudes: Numbers Count’,
American Sociological Review 63, 512–35.
Tropp, L. R. & Pettigrew, T. F. 2005a. ‘Differential Relationships between Intergroup Contact
and Affective and Cognitive Dimensions of Prejudice’, Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin 31, 1145–58.
Tropp, L. R. & Pettigrew, T. F. 2005b. ‘Relationships between Intergroup Contact and
Prejudice among Minority and Majority Status Groups’, Psychological Science 16, 951–7.
Tyack, D. 2001. ‘School for Citizens: The Politics of Civic Education from 1790 to 1990’, in
Gerstle, G. & Mollenkopf, J. eds, E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives
on Immigrant Political Incorporation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
United States Department of Defense. 1997. Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey. Available
online at: http://www.dod.mil/prhome/docs/r97_027.pdf.
Vigdor, J. L. 2004. ‘Community Composition and Collective Action: Analyzing Initial Mail
Response to the 2000 Census’, Review of Economics and Statistics 86, 303 –12.
Webber, S. S. & Donahue, L. M. 2001. ‘Impact of Highly and Less Job-related Diversity on
Work Group Cohesion and Performance: A Meta-analysis’, Journal of Management 27, 141–
62.
Williams, K. Y. & O’Reilly, C. A. 1998. ‘Demography and Diversity in Organizations: A Review
of 40 Years of Research’, in Staw, B. M. & Cummings, L. L., eds, Research in Organizational
Behavior, vol. 20. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Willinger, M. et al. 2003. ‘A Comparison of Trust and Reciprocity Between France and Ger-
many: Experimental Investigation Based on the Investment Game’, Journal of Economic
Psychology 24, 447– 66.
World Bank. 2005. Global Economic Prospects: Economic Implications of Remittances and
Migration. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Putnam

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Putnam

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ISSN 0080 – 6757

© 2007 The Author(s)

E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and

Community in the Twenty-first Century

* Harvard University and University of Manchester. E-mail: robert_putnam@harvard.edu

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 137

• Ethnic diversity will increase substantially in virtually all modern societies

138 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

effects of diversity by constructing new, more encompassing identities.

The Prospects and Benefits of Immigration and

Figure 1. Growth of Immigration in Selected OECD Countries, 1960–2005.

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 139

diversity, is entirely unrelated to immigration since the ancestors of most

• Creativity in general seems to be enhanced by immigration and diversity

140 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

undocumented) contribute financially to our Social Security system, but

In short, immigration and multicultural diversity have powerful advantages

Immigration and Diversity Foster Social Isolation

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 141

Percentage opposed to Percentage opposed to

• Across workgroups in the United States, as well as in Europe, internal

142 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 143

144 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Figure 2. Social Capital Benchmark Survey Locations.

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 145

Table 2. Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey Sites

National sample 3,003

146 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Figure 3. Racial Homogeneity and Inter-racial Trust.

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 147

Figure 4. Racial Homogeneity and Trust of Neighbours.

148 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Figure 5. Racial Homogeneity and Intra-racial Trust.

Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 149

Figure 6. Racial Homogeneity and Ethnocentric Trust.

• Less expectation that others will cooperate to solve dilemmas of collective

To be sure, some dimensions of social capital and civic engagement seem

150 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Age Affluence/poverty Citizenship

In addition, we control for region of the country; the respondent’s gender,

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 151

Table 3. Predicting Trust in Neighbours from Individual and Contextual Variables

(Constant) 0.79 0.11 7.0 0.0000

152 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

patterns are well-established from past research. Next in importance are

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 153

Different Strokes for Different Folks?

154 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Thus, we replicated our multivariate, multilevel analyses, but included

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 155

Non-linearity and Inequality?

156 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Pot-holes and Playgrounds

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 157

from community to community, whereas, in fact, variation in reactions

• We replicated the analysis on the (N = 3,003) national sample alone. The

In short, we have tried to test every conceivable artifactual explanation for

158 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007

Becoming Comfortable with Diversity

Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007 159

160 Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30 – No. 2, 2007